..Specifically, we hypothesize that perceived eye contact is initially detected by a subcortical route, which then modulates the activation of the social brain as it processes the accompanying detailed sensory information...

Absence of contagious yawning in children with autism spectrum disorder

..Current results suggest that contagious yawning is impaired in ASD, which may relate to their impairment in empathy. It supports the claim that contagious yawning is based on the capacity for empathy...

..Whereas gaze following in many nonhuman species supports social information gathering [14-18], in humans it initially appears to reflect the expectation of a more active, communicative role from the information source...

Mindblind eyes: an absence of spontaneous theory of mind in Asperger syndrome

..This was not the case for individuals with Asperger syndrome (n = 19). Thus, these individuals do not attribute mental states spontaneously, but they may be able to do so in explicit tasks through compensatory learning...

Cultural modulation of face and gaze scanning in young children

Atsushi SenjuCentre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London, London, United KingdomPLoS ONE 8:e74017. 2013

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The importance of the eyes: communication skills in infants of blind parents

..These results are consistent with the claim that individuals with ASD do not spontaneously attend to socially relevant information, even though they can easily process the same information when their attention is navigated towards it...

Spontaneous theory of mind and its absence in autism spectrum disorders

..These findings suggest that the capacity for theory of mind develops much earlier than was previously thought, and the absence of spontaneous theory of mind may relate to impairment in social interaction and communication found in ASD...

Do 18-month-olds really attribute mental states to others? A critical test

Atsushi SenjuCentre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London, United KingdomPsychol Sci 22:878-80. 2011

..These data constitute compelling evidence that 18-month-olds infer perceptual access and appreciate its causal role in altering the epistemic states of other people...

Absence of spontaneous action anticipation by false belief attribution in children with autism spectrum disorder

Atsushi SenjuCentre for Brain and Cognitive Development, School of Psychology, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, UKDev Psychopathol 22:353-60. 2010

..The results suggest that children with ASD have an impairment in false belief attribution, which is independent of their verbal ability...

..This might result in altered eye-contact behavior, which hampers subsequent development of social and communicative skills...

[Reading mind from pictures of eyes: theory of mind, language ability, general intellectual ability, and autism]

Atsushi SenjuDepartment of Life Sciences, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo, Komaba, Meguro ku, Tokyo 153 8902Shinrigaku Kenkyu 73:64-70. 2002

..These results suggest both the independence of mind-reading ability from language ability and general intelligence, and a strong relationship between theory of mind deficit and the autistic disorder...